


The Day We Caught the Train

by smokingbomber



Category: Excalibur (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: AU Crossovers From Hell, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Crack, Bloody Ink, Crossover, Crosstime Caper, Gen, Seriously Old Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2003-03-25
Updated: 2003-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-13 10:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3377444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokingbomber/pseuds/smokingbomber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Crosstime Caper goes on too long, basically, and gets REALLY lost, and drops characters and gains characters from different Marvel Universes, and stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thankfully unfinished crackfic from 2003, written in and posted from the Bloody Ink mailing list's email window without even self-editing. The fanfic equivalent of nightblogging.
    
    
    "Okay, so there was this guy."
    
    "A guy? What guy?"
    
    "I dunno, just some guy. A perfect stranger. Totally anonymous."
    
    "Well he can't be *totally* anonymous, you /did/ see him. Gotta have 
    *some* kinda distinguishing features."
    
    "I'd never seen him before! He was just some guy at the time!"
    
    "But he's not now?"
    
    "Will you shut up and let me tell you what happened?"
    
    "Okay, okay."
    
    "So there was this guy who was a perfect stranger at the time - and 
    still is, dammit - and he was on the corner, selling flags. And I--"
    
    "What kind of flags?"
    
    "Dammit, I know I'm not a Professional Intergalactic Storyteller, but 
    we can't all be as cool as you are. Let me tell!"
    
    "Sorry."
    
    "Selling all kinds of flags. Nautical flags, national flags, school 
    flags, those stupid Happy Happy flags that people hang out for, like, 
    Easter or Cinco de Mayo. A bunch of flags. And I saw this one I *had* 
    to get. Had to."
    
    "What was it?"
    
    "Time's up. You're gonna miss your train. I'll tell you later! Love 
    you! Bye! ...RUN!"
    
    (part two)
    
    *Gonna miss my train. Sheesh. This Sliders business is getting old. 
    She knows I'm never going back there! Tell me later my ENTIRE ass...* 
    brooded Kitty, tugging her tank top down where it'd begun riding up 
    when she slouched crankily into her seat. *I wasn't even supposed to 
    BE there that day!*
    
    "You didn't wanna get stuck there, didja?" came a cheerful voice from 
    behind her.
    
    Kitty turned to glance over her shoulder at the tall, obscenely 
    gorgeous redhead who was in the process of wandering over. "Well, no. 
    But Kitty -- okay, I'm really gonna have to find a new way to 
    reference people, because, like, this is getting ridiculous -- was 
    telling me something she thought was really cool, and I didn't get to 
    hear the end of it."
    
    "Well, you could always add modifiers. For instance, you coulda 
    called her 'Seventeen-Year-Old Kitty', but we're bound to run into 
    more. The traditional way is sorta...mm. Using a descriptive for the 
    world they're from. Or the weirdness peculiar to their world. So 
    she'd've been Intergalactic Storyteller Kitty, or maybe Space Opera 
    Kitty," said Rachel, leaning on the back of Kitty's chair. She idly 
    checked over her uniform, adjusting the cuffs. "Everyone's got labels 
    like that, otherwise it *is* ridiculous. This Kurt calls you 
    Braceface Ultimates-verse Kitty. Even I've got names. I mean, notice 
    how the Pete who's piloting talks about me as The Rachel With The 
    Stupid Uniform."
    
    "Oh, and I meant to ask you about him-- no, wait. What does he call 
    *me*?"
    
    "You don't want to know."
    
    (part three)
    
    "No, I do! Tell me!"
    
    "You're gonna have to overhear that one."
    
    "You're mean. He's a spy. He's good at not being overheard. Besides, 
    how the heck do you pilot a train?"
    
    "What else did you want to call it?"
    
    "Uh, well. Uh."
    
    "Yeah. It's not like it's on track or anything..."
    
    "*Rachel*!"
    
    ---
    
    "Are you sure we can't just drop her off?" asked Pete under his 
    breath, leaning against the control panel. Piloting indeed.
    
    "Who?"
    
    "BabyKitty."
    
    Kurt grinned toothily over a styrofoam cup of chicken-flavored 
    ramen. "Better not let her catch you calling her that, Wisdom."
    
    "Mnf."
    
    Out the windows, of course, was complete madness. Chaos. It was like 
    a song off the tail end of Radiohead's 'Amnesiac', or possibly 
    something from LP 3 of the Clash's 'Sandinista!'. Well, worse, 
    really. More like Revolution 9 while the listener's on acid. This was 
    somewhat irritating, because there's nothing so useful as glaring out 
    a window when things aren't going your way. 
    
    Finally, after a somewhat lengthy ramen-slurping-sounds-filled pause, 
    Pete spoke again. "I'm going to see to Morgan."
    
    "Oh," started Kurt, swallowing hurriedly and making a face as the 
    ramen went down wrong, "khek. Ugh. Keep out of the last car, that's 
    where Britanic's housed himself."
    
    "Right."
    
    ---
    
    "...Nightcrawler, do you think we could find a Kitty who's a little 
    more interested in math and a little less interested in N*Sync?" 
    asked Alistaire almost diffidently, coming into the first car and 
    shutting the door quietly behind him.
    
    This time, Kurt actually choked on the ramen. As he coughed 
    helplessly and set the cup aside, he waved one hand somewhat 
    gracelessly about - if it were anyone but Kurt, it'd've been 
    flailing. 
    
    "Are you all right?"
    
    Another not-quite flail and some impressive coughing later, Kurt 
    slouched into his seat and eyed Alistaire. "Does /everyone/ have a 
    problem with her?"
    
    "With whom?"
    
    "Braceface Ultimates-verse Kitty."
    
    "...I don't have a problem with her!"
    
    "But you want a different Kitty."
    
    "I could use some help."
    
    *I don't think I'll ever get used to interchangable Excalibur 
    members. I don't think I'll ever get used to this verdammt train. 
    Mustn't maim Stuart. Must speak civilly,* Kurt instructed himself, 
    rubbing his face. "You can wait, like everyone else, to see if 
    there's a place she wants to stay or we find her home. Or we find 
    another that doesn't mind a counterpart occupying the same train. You 
    remember what happened when we had two Ferons."
    
    Alistaire actually shuddered. "One was bad enough."
    
    "Yes. May I finish my lunch, please?"
    
    "Oh. Yes. Terribly sorry," said the Englishman, backing out of the 
    car and shutting the door again. Barefoot Loincloth Ramen-Addict Kurt 
    was someone *he* wasn't entirely sure he'd get used to.
    
    ---
    
    "I *told* you he was spooky," whispered Kitty, tugging at Rachel's 
    sleeve after Pete'd passed through the car.
    
    "Yes. Spy. Spooky. They tend to go hand in hand," replied Rachel, 
    entirely too amused. She detached Kitty's hand from her sleeve and 
    plopped into the seat across from the young teenager. "So what were 
    you meaning to ask me about him? Other than what he calls you, 
    because I'm still not telling."
    
    "Oh. Er," started the girl, looking away from the door the spy had 
    gone through, trying not to look at Rachel. "Well, uh. Why's he keep, 
    like, staring at me? I mean, I don't think I look *that* weird, or 
    anything, or. Like. Is he some kinda pedophile? He's all old."
    
    "No, he's not. You're perfectly safe around him," assured Rachel, 
    stretching out some. "Trust me. Telepath. Et cetera."
    
    "Not a pedophile or not old? Because he's old enough to be too old, 
    you know?"
    
    "Yes."
    
    "Well which is it?"
    
    "Not a pedophile, and not old, but he's as aware as you are that he's 
    too old for you."
    
    "What's that supposed to mean!"
    
    "Are you obsessing over Pete, Kitty?"
    
    "...no!" *It's just that his eyes are so blue. And he's so *intense*. 
    And so English. And my mom would *so* wig.* Too late, Kitty covered 
    her face and thought of mauve elephants. 
    
    "You *are*!" grinned Rachel, leaning forward. "Kitty and Pe-ete, 
    sittin' in a tree, F-U-C--"
    
    That warranted a squeak from Kitty and a desperate 
    handflapping. "That is *SO IMPROBABLE*! Not to mention GROSS! But 
    improbable! You can't sit in a tree and, you know..." 
    
    "Have you tried?"
    
    "Oh man..."
    
    ---
    
    "All right?"
    
    Pete came quietly into the car that'd been recently retrofitted as a 
    medical thingy, hooking his hands into his pockets after he'd shut 
    the door.
    
    "I guess so," was the muffled response from underneath several layers 
    of blanket. Only a mess of unruly blond hair was visible.
    
    "He didn't mean anything by it," offered Pete, trying to mean it. It 
    wasn't long before he gave up. "And even if he did, he's an idiot."
    
    "Don't care what he said. It's this suddenly being a girl thing I'm 
    kind of having problems with," came the voice again, more audibly 
    miserable - its owner was beginning to peer out from the blankets.
    
    "Don't worry, as soon as you get away from him, it'll stop."
    
    "And when can I do that?" 
    
    Morgan pushed the blankets off and sat up, looking fully as unhappy 
    as he -- she -- sounded. Long, wild yellow hair spilled over the 
    teenager's shoulders, down her back. The green and black outfit she 
    wore fit snugly, coming up to her neck and covering hands and feet; 
    her face and body were unequivocally beautiful, but she moved like a 
    scared, angry adolescent boy.
    
    "Can try for next stop, if you're not hurting too badly. Or wait 
    until the train comes by your universe again - as soon as Stuart gets 
    a hand with the maths, the probability we'll get there skyrockets." 
    Pete leaned against a bulkhead, reaching up with one hand to scratch 
    his nose. 
    
    "Then I guess we pray for a Pryde that can do the maths, huh."
    
    "Yeah. There's a lot of that going around."
    
    "Poor Kitty."
    
    "What, BabyKitty? She doesn't want to be here, either."
    
    "Oh, boy. Don't call her that to her face!"
    
    ---
    


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From: "Vesper Antagonist"  
> Date: Sat Mar 22, 2003 5:22 pm  
> Subject: "The Day We Caught The Train" #4 (i hurt u now HA HA)  
> 
    
    
    The train actually hit tracks this time. It hit tracks, and rolled to 
    a stop in front of two extraordinarily puzzled teenagers, one of 
    which was holding a license plate and the other which had a blank 
    sheet of stationery. It was a beautiful sunny day outside, and all 
    around the tracks where they stopped was shiny silver wreckage, 
    unidentifiable and horrific.
    
    "Oh fuck," breathed Pete.
    
    "What?" asked Alistaire, coming up next to Pete, looking out the 
    window. "It looks lovely. They're not trying to kill us."
    
    "We're not staying," decided Pete. "Rachel! Kick Widget, will you?"
    
    Rachel and Kitty joined the two Englishmen, and the latter peered out 
    the window. "Oh my god. I've seen this movie."
    
    "Movie?" asked Rachel, bemused, putting a hand on the plexiglass and 
    eyeing Pete. "I'm not gonna kick Widget. They're not shooting at us. 
    Besides, I'm not kicking Widget anyway, you foul, cranky thing."
    
    Kurt entered the car from one end, and momentarily, Morgan trailed in 
    from the other direction. Their faces, entertainingly enough, matched 
    in puzzlement. "That looks like California," said Kurt, frowning a 
    little over his cup of ramen. "We've never landed in California 
    before, have we?"
    
    "It doesn't matter because we're leaving now," insisted Pete, pushing 
    back from the window and reaching over to prod Rachel. "Now!"
    
    "But I've never been to California," protested Kitty.
    
    "Can we leave Britanic here?" asked Morgan, still trailing, but this 
    time just trailing a blanket. And holding it very close. With her 
    arms crossed firmly over her chest. "Or can I get some clothes? Baggy 
    ones? Please?"
    
    "We're are leaving /right now/."
    
    ---
    
    "So you're not time travellers?" asked Marty, squinting in the 
    sunlight and holding the license plate over his eyes.
    
    "Oh no no no, we travel around through time and space," replied 
    Alistaire earnestly. "Well, relative dimension in space. It's 
    brilliant, actually, the physics involved is staggeringly beautiful."
    
    "More like bloody trippy," muttered Pete, lighting a cigarette and 
    turning away.
    
    "You're only upset because you didn't get your way." Kurt's 
    expression was beatific; he'd acquired another cup of ramen. It was 
    like there was some sort of pocket universe populated entirely with 
    ramen noodles in his belly, he never stopped eating them. Entirely 
    unnerving.
    
    "Mnf."
    
    "So you're sort of time travellers. Wait. Didn't I see that on PBS?" 
    Marty crossed his arms, eyeing Alistaire skeptically. "Late night BBC 
    America or something."
    
    "Ask him his name, McFly," said Pete, wandering off. 
    
    ---
    
    "Are you sure?" asked Morgan, eyes wide and horrified. "I can maybe 
    understand the bright colors - dayglo, you called them? - but I don't 
    know about the rest of it."
    
    "Come on! This is nineteen eighty-five! Get with the program, chica. 
    It's the height of fashion!" enthused Jennifer, positioning Morgan in 
    front of the mirror again. "I think you need another belt."
    
    Kitty was without words. No, really. Collapsed in the corner of the 
    dressing room, giggling helplessly. Every time she tried to talk, she 
    got another eyeful.
    
    "I think," grinned Rachel, "he - I mean she - had something a little 
    less loud in mind. Do you have a Gap here?"
    
    "Not in town," blinked Jennifer, turning to Rachel, then eyeing 
    Kitty. "Whaaaat?"
    
    "...help..."
    
    "She's from 2003, don't mind her."
    
    ---
    
    Widget cheerily ate the coupler between the last car of the train and 
    the second to last car of the train. "Oh wow!" it squeaked.
    
    --- 
    


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From: "Vesper Antagonist"  
> Date: Tue Mar 25, 2003 12:13 am  
> Subject: Ehh-- Trainwreck #5. Well, it *is*.
    
    
    "...you're all mad."
    
    "Once we get out of the 80s," reasoned Kurt, finally having taken a 
    break from alternating between preparing and eating ramen and 
    sharpening a sword up on an improbable perch, "the 90s are gonna make 
    the 60s look like the 50s."
    
    "And you're not Dennis Hopper. Nor are you Mick Jones, so you aren't 
    even allowed to sample it. We're wasting time here, Wagner," said 
    Pete, glancing at Kurt briefly. He looked back at the window, leaning 
    on its bottom half. Alistaire was outside with Marty, still trying to 
    explain things to him - and all because the overwhelmed dork with the 
    unfortunate name (Marty, not Alistaire) had gone and *asked* about 
    time travel.
    
    "What do you mean, wasting -- this isn't the first instance of your 
    implying a timetable, Wisdom," observed Kurt slowly, eyeing the older 
    mutant.
    
    "Not getting any younger," was all Pete had to say on the subject. 
    *Rachel,* he called soundlessly. *Are you lot done yet? Don't want 
    this train getting smashed by the next real one. And smashed in the 
    debris sense of the word, not the alcoholic.*
    
    *Yeah. Oh, frelling--*
    
    *You're not your crackheaded brother, either. What's up?*
    
    *Duck.*
    
    "Shit," said Pete out loud, ducking out of sight of the window. 
    "Duck."
    
    "Duck?" asked Kurt, blinking. And then he got a look out the 
    window. "Heiliger Go--" he had time to start exclaiming before Rachel 
    and Kitty flew desperately through the side of the car - yes phased 
    thank you, the damn train's had enough abuse - and Morgan pinballed 
    through the door and into him. The next ten seconds were almost as 
    chaotic as the timestream. As soon as Kitty had her breath and her 
    feet back, she leaned halfway out the window and yelled really loud 
    at Alistaire to get in or get his geeky fuzzy-collar-coat-clad butt 
    kicked six ways to Sunday, and Pete had to grab her ankles and tug 
    her back in because she started falling out, which was interesting 
    because he was still on the floor from having ducked and Kitty ended 
    up knocking the wind out of him with her knees. Kurt, having 
    abandoned both sword and dignity, scrambled to his feet and darted 
    outside to collect Alistaire, because threats from BabyKitty didn't 
    hold much water. Morgan, more desperate than ashamed but only at the 
    moment because my *god* the humiliation of what the genderbent 
    teenager was wearing, was ransacking the train with Rachel for 
    Widget. Britanic, of course, was still in the last car of the train, 
    where he'd locked himself after the Morgan incident. None of this was 
    helped by Marty yelling something unintelligible outside as the train 
    began to move, or the sound of distant sirens growing closer, or the 
    alarm that started to ring next to the tracks, or the bone-shaking 
    rumble and growing whistle-howl of an oncoming train. Kurt tumbled 
    inside with a thoroughly disheveled Alistaire and Morgan yelled, "I 
    found it!" just as police cars started arriving and the approaching 
    train came into sight, and Rachel dove for Widget, and there was a 
    blinding flash of yellow-orange feather-light--
    
    ---
    
    Marty started making himself scarce as soon as the sirens started 
    getting closer, so he wasn't actually blinded by the energy signature 
    of the Phoenix - but the flash of light was definitely there, and so 
    was the horrible screeching sound of rending steel and popping 
    plexiglas. *Oh, /shit/. They didn't-- they didn't make it in time, 
    they--*
    
    It was way too little debris for an entire train.
    
    There was a long-haired blond guy in spandex reeling away from the 
    wreckage.
    
    His ranting sounded really English. It also sounded really, really 
    drunk.
    
    Marty decided that if he could walk away from getting hit by a train, 
    he didn't actually need the help of a seventeen-year-old guy who 
    really needed to go find his girlfriend.
    
    ---
    
    "Does the train feel, I dunno, lighter to anyone else?" asked Kitty, 
    squinting.
    
    ---
     
    
    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time, color me utter(leigh, ha ha) self-conscious. Here I am, writing a terrifying mishmash of pop cultural throwbacks and crazy Crosstime altiversal counterparts that should never never see the light of day EVAR, right, in a completely scattered and badly- narrated pathetic excuse for a crossover fic, and tossing it wantonly in the faces of far better and more dedicated writers than I. I'd stop in shame and wait for the next challenge to try something else, but it's gripped something vital - possibly my cigarettes - and if I don't write it I dream I'm stuck in it.
> 
> A fate worse than death.
> 
> So if I am irritating anyone with this nigh-daily business of Crosstime Carnage - which I hope desperately is at least as tolerable as watching Pete Wisdom eat (horrifying, yet strangely fascinating) - please let me know, and I'll shunt it elsewhere. Switch tracks, so to speak. Arr har har.


End file.
